text: Syntheses of cisplatin start from potassium tetrachloroplatinate. Several procedures are available. One obstacle is the facile formation of Magnus's green salt (MGS), which has the same empirical formula as cisplatin. The traditional way to avoid MGS involves the conversion of KPtCl to KPtI, as originally described by Dhara. Reaction with ammonia forms PtI(NH) which is isolated as a yellow compound. When silver nitrate in water is added insoluble silver iodide precipitates and [Pt(OH)(NH)](NO) remains in solution. Addition of potassium chloride will form the final product which precipitates In the triiodo intermediate the addition of the second ammonia ligand is governed by the trans effect.
  A one-pot synthesis of cisplatin from KPtCl has been developed.  It relies on the slow release of ammonia from ammonium acetate.